Taking the Bullying by the Horn: Asian low-profile, post-coloniality and the emergence of resistance against bussing in Southall and Bradford

This paper seeks to examine the political and sociological dimensions of the emergence of a (largely) Asian movement to challenge immigrant children “dispersal” in the Local Education Authorities of Bradford and Ealing (Southall). Bussing / Dispersal was a system of forceful integration of “immigrant children” whereby mostly Asian pupils were sent to predominantly white schools in suburban or white working-class areas. It lasted from 1963 to 1981 (in Southall and Bradford), in Halifax (West-Yorkshire) it went on until 1986. However well-intentioned, bussing was a total failure. This paper seeks to explore several post-colonial dimensions of the Asian low-profile which informed some of the (belated) resistance movement against bussing. It is largely based on 32 interviews with formerly bussed pupils, on local archives and is drawn from chapter 6 of my forthcoming monograph: The ‘Desegregation’ of English Schools: Bussing, Race and Urban Space (Manchester University Press, autumn 2018).

9h40

Slimane Hargas

Université Paris 13 (PLEAIDE)

An anti-colonial revolution in a postcolonial world: Irish republicanism and the representation of the Troubles through the lens of the Algerian war of independence

During the Troubles, Irish republicans strove to depict Northern Ireland as the last British colony. At a time when decolonisation was all the rage, it was a political strategy to glean international support in favour of republican demands, namely independence and reunification. To make their arguments in favour of the colonial and postcolonial paradigms more sustainable, republicans relied on colonial analogies. It was in this context that Ireland was construed as ‘Britain’s Algeria’, much to the dismay of such scholars as Conor Cruise O’Brien (1971) and Hugh Roberts (1986). Based on the long series of articles devoted to the Algerian war of independence in Republican News during the 1970s and 1980s, this paper is going to deal with the influence of the Algerian revolution on Irish republicans, the relevance of the Algerian analogy during the Troubles and its contribution to the debates revolving around Ireland’s colonial history.

10h

Virginie Roiron

Institut d’Etudes politiques, Strasbourg (SAGE, UMR 7363)

Who’s calling the shots? The 1979 Lancaster House negotiations and the meaning of Zimbabwe’s independence

This paper proposes to explore the negotiations on the independence of Zimbabwe between the UK government and Zimbabwean nationalist movements at Lancaster House in 1979, as they deeply informed the post-independence relations between the two countries. Indeed, the issue of land redistribution, crucial though it may have been in a territory which had been governed by a White minority government since its creation, was somewhat neglected and dismissed by the British government as secondary in the political process towards independence. Far from being peaceful and consensual, the Lancaster House negotiations were the arena of a struggle between nationalist leaders and the British government as they symbolically fought to set the agenda on topics which they thought should inform the future independence of the country. Though the Lancaster House compromise ended up in the empowerment of nationalist leaders, it also reflected the British government’s own priorities in settling the Rhodesian issue.

Revolution and liberation in the making of a postcolonial United Kingdom : spaces, practices and limits

Independences in the 20th century were rarely a total revolution, which some had hoped for and others had feared, in the European metropoles and the colonies where the new ‘postcolonial’ states were being built. Research on the theoretical and practical links between revolution and decolonisation have thus shown the persistence of colonial conceptions, practices and languages in political and economic cultures, as well as international exchanges. Essential to the understanding of these phenomena, and to the possibility of a more total liberation, is the study of violence, both physical and symbolic, as a means of domination and contestation, and the analysis of colonial legacies in the contemporary systems of authority and order. The end of the British empire was not the largely negotiated and pacified progress which long dominated political and historiographical discourse – and which some still favour. But the violence at the heart of the liberation struggles was not always moved by revolutionary ideas, methods and objectives, and was also confronted by models of non-violent revolution, whose local and transnational dynamics remain a very rich field of investigation.
In order to reassess relations between revolution, liberation and decolonisation, this workshop will revisit the emergence of postcolonial practices in the United Kingdom, reflecting on actors, structures and timelines, and discuss the place of the United Kingdom as a terrain for revolutionary struggles, connecting local and transnational approaches. The following questions, among others, can be investigated:

– The influence and legacies of revolutions (American, French, Haitian, Russian and Chinese, among others) on nationalist and anticolonial movements, and on the resistance to such movements
– Tensions between violence, non-violence and pacifism (conceptions and practices) in the fight for colonial emancipation
– The connections between political and other revolutions (social, cultural, technological…) in liberation movements and decolonisation processes
– The impact of colonial practices on population control in the United Kingdom (security, migration, socio-medical policies …), before and after the official end of empire
– The legacy of independences (in their successes and limits) in the international relations of the United Kingdom and its former colonies (from development aid to cultural policies and land redistribution…)

Please send an abstract and a short bio-bibliography, in French or English, to Mélanie Torrent by 15 January 2018.